In July 1971, President Richard Nixon jolted the international status quoand set diplomatic nerves worldwide fluttering—by announcing he would visit China. Nixon’s bold overture reshaped the modern world and has paid vast dividends to Washington, to Beijing and to the general stability of global geopolitics.
Now another potentially seismic diplomatic event takes shape: President Donald Trump plans to clink glasses with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Yes, the same dictator Trump taunted on Twitter as “Little Rocket Man.” Trump hopes to strike a deal with the North Korean leader to relinquish his nuclear weapons arsenal.
What could go wrong? Just about everything, critics say. Skeptics carp that Kim wins a huge propaganda bonanza just by sitting down with the West’s leader without first promising concessions in return.
But Trump is taking a smart calculated risk.
The main reason is that Trump doesn’t have any better options to resolve this conundrum without military action. Several decades of patient American diplomacy, from the Clinton administration in the 1990s through those of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, failed to achieve the key goal: to prevent North Korea from threatening the U.S. and the world with nuclear weapons. Kim now has up to 60, and he is intent on building more. He also has ballistic missiles that could hit U.S. cities, including Chicago, with a nuclear payload.
The Trump-Kim summit is tentatively planned for late May or June in a location to be determined. Meanwhile, Trump is cleverly lowering expectations—here and in Pyongyang—about what, if anything, the meeting may yield. “If I think that it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go,” he said. “If the meeting, when I’m there is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting.”
Translation for Kim: Don’t bring empty promises. The U.S. has been there and done that with your predecessors.
Could Trump dazzle the world with a foreign relations master stroke? Sure. Nixon went to China and returned triumphant. Not because he delivered a big deal, but because he started a diplomatic process that eventually opened China to the world.